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Crystalis Campaign 1, Episode 3 Mersscene Docks, ~ 9PM When we last left our heroes… After defeating the undead necromancer, the group had discovered a key hidden in his staff. Dechard had long suspected that the cult had been making use of the rumored thieves’ tunnels below the Mayberry bridge, and speculated that the key might open a way down. With nothing else to go on, the group makes it way across town from the wharf to the bridge. As they travel though the darkened city, darting in and out of side streets to avoid being noticed by the city watch, they talk amongst themselves. A downtrodden Fried, who had recently showed a much darker side of “himself”, is given some small degree of comfort by his companions’ reaction (or rather, the lack thereof). Edriair and Fried express mutual appreciation for the others’ abilities, and Soh offers his Fried his cloak to temporarily replace the one that had been damaged in their last encounter. Soh also checks in with Issac to discuss his reservations about their party. Issac replies that he holds no overt misgivings about anyone in the party but Fried, but is not certain of precisely why he feels that way. Issac and Soh agree to watch Fried for each other in case he should have another… outburst. The Mayberry bridge is small; essentially an overpass to allow passage over one of the city’s drains. When at last the group reaches it, they all split up to look for the hidden door. With nothing apparent, Soh inspects the wall beneath the bridge more closely. He finds etchings in the wall which he can’t read, but Fried can. The letters brighten and glow when hidden from all light, and it takes half the party to shield the wall from the moon enough to reveal the riddle: “Sixty-four, thirty men and two. Step one, the two. (Insert final line here)” After quite a bit of puzzling, Dechard suggests that there are 64 spaces on a game board. “Chess?” asks (Raz? Issac?). “Yes! The pieces! Thirty men and two queens,” exclaims Fried “But what does the other part mean about step one then two?” Soh approaches the wall, “Pawn.” Upon hearing the passphrase, the wall slides back to reveal a locked door. “Pawn?” Fried asks himself. “Of course! They can move either one or two spaces depending on whether they have moved or not.” Then he remembers that this was the last word uttered by the slain necromancer. Fried grows visibly troubled to learn that the man he had almost killed was not only sentient after all, but gave them the password to the cult’s hideout with his final breath before his execution. Either not noticing his companion’s delimma or not caring, Soh takes the key they found on the Necromancer’s corpse and tries the lock on the hidden door, opening it with ease. A perfect match! Sliding the door open, he peeks inside. The party is immediately assaulted with a putrid smell, shaming even the sewer drain that ran beneath the bridge. An tainted smell: mold, mildew, rotting flesh, and things fouler still bursting forth from the door the second the pressure was changed. Soh grimaces and forces himself to stomach through it. On the other side of the door he can see a dank, unlit stairwell descending into complete, utter darkness. Soh turns to the group, declares that he will lead the group down into the tunnel, and tell them all to be as quiet as they can. He lights his hooded lantern and hands it to Isaac. “Be prepared for anything” he says, and slinks down the stairs. Far more capable of stealth than their non-human companions, Raz and Edriar follow at staggered lengths behind him, with Fried and Dechard behind them, and Issac bringing up the rear. The steps leading down are steep and pitch black. The non-humans have the benefit of darkvision, allowing them to carefully avoid puddles, scattered debris, and slippery or damaged steps without making so much as a sound. Not all of the party is so fortunate. As they descend, Isaac stumbles upon a broken step, tumbling head over heels down the stairs in his armor. As he falls, he bumps into Freid, who is toppled by the impact. As they fall, they collide with Dechard, who also falls. The three humans tumble down the stairs in a tangle of limbs, weapons, and armor until they collide with Edriar. They slam into his back and come to a screeching halt, the Deadalin hardly inconvenienced by their combined force. Hearing a commotion upstairs, Soh darts back to the rest of the group. In other circumstances, the plight of the humans might have been amusing comical even. But with only dark clues hinting at what lay ahead, now was not the time or the place. Knowing at a glance that Issac was the cause of the mess, Soh gets as close to his face as possible, saying “The next time you trip, you may never get back up.” Hard words, but given their last encounter with one of these cultists, it was much less a threat than a warning. Issac rights himself, aids the others in standing, and presses on… more carefully this time. As he leads the group down, Soh sees a sliver of bright green light coming from a crack in the floor. He motions to Raziel that the others should wait, and kneels down the peer through the slit. Below he can see three cultists performing a ritual of some kind. They are standing on a large, flat altar, encircled by a ring of blood. As he watches, their leader (a bald man with a crown of tattoos) signals for a hostage to be brought forward. The victim is bound, gagged, and has a burlap sack placed over his head. Soh can hear a rhythmic chanting, rising and falling, in a language he does not understand. The chant reaches a crescendo and the leader of the cultists slashes his sacrifice’s throat with a knife. The helpless man kicks, gurgles, and falls limp. The cultists wait expectantly, as if his death had been meant to produce some immediate effect, but nothing else happens. Cursing, the leader signals for another to be brought forward. His cohorts bring forth a young maiden dressed in the robes of a priest of Alnorum, the first god, the god of light. The leader pulls Alnorum’s medallion from around her neck, flinging it across the room. His hand burns, reacting violently to the sigil. The group begins chanting, just as they did before the first sacrifice. Sensing what would come next, Soh signals to Raz that they should expect three enemies below, and that time is of the essence, then turns and dashes silently down the stairs. When Raz tells the group what to expect, the throw caution to the wind and rush down after him. Quicker than the others, Soh reaches the landing at the bottom of the stairs first. Without making so much as a whisper, he moves through the shadows in the corners of the room to put the cultists between himself and the door, hoping to be in an advantageous position when the others reached them. He kneels in the corner and waits. The cultists, now hearing the commotion coming down the stairs, are expecting company by the time Raz and Edriar burst into the room. Fried and Issac, arriving just behind the others, are in time to see the leader lay his hands on the faces of his henchmen, siphoning their life force from them to supplement his own. He steps back into the center of the ring, produces a long, curved saber from his cloak and sets it ablaze with a dark green flame, and challenges the newcomers to attack. Raz is the first to respond, hurtling forward to get in range of the necromancer. With only one opponent, he was no doubt hoping to finish the man himself, one-on-one. Upon crossing the ring of blood onto the altar, he is shocked the see tendrils of blood rise up and lash out at him, cutting the flesh on his leg. In doing so, however, the blood dried up and left the ring broken where he had crossed it, much to the outrage of the necromancer. Seeing this, Edriar rushed forward as well, sidestepping to ensure that he crossed exactly where Raziel had and thus avoid the “bloodbath”. Seeing his comrades rush in, Soh decides to make his move. Lunging forward from the shadows, he dashes straight through the animated ring of blood and plunges his dagger into the necromancer’s back, shouting to Isaac that this opponent is vulnerable to holy magics. As Fried and Issac rush forward to help, the necromancer quickly becomes surrounded. Sensing the need to gain some space, he hurredly casts a spell to close the ring of blood again and another one to set it ablaze with green flame. After pushing the female captive to safety, Fried answers with flames of with own, hurling fiery blasts at the enemy from his hands and sending fireballs forth from his staff. No stranger to magics, the Necromancer is able to repeatedly counter Fried’s attempts to singe him, taking minimal damage from the attacks. Fortunately for our heroes, he was non as adept and dodging direct attacks. Raz manages to trip him with his chain-sickle, then transforms and ravages him with his claws. A single powerful jab from Edriar leaves the foe dazed for a time, allowing the others time to get in several attacks without fear of retribution. Quickly beseeching Antares to palce divine protection upon the party, Issac rushes forward to ensure the safety of the priestess. Cutting her bonds with ease, he removes the hood from off her head and sees that she is, in fact, a most handsome woman. In his deepest, manliest voice, he tells her to run. Then turning on his heel, furious with righteous indignation at such unchivalrous treatment of a beautiful lady at the hands of his foe, he barrels forward, casting his sword aside in his wrath in favor or repeatedly bludgeoning the necromancer with shield. Recovering from being down, dazed, stabbed, singed, and bludgeoned, the necromancer takes stock of his situation and forms a new strategy. He turns and casts a spell on Raziel. Though Raz seems unfazed, the necromancer seems pleased with the result. He then casts a shockwave to know the party back through the ring of flames, knocking all but Edriar flat on their backs. Seeing that Edriar was able to withstand the full force, he tried to case the same spell on him as he did on Raz. Edriar seems unaffected, but this seems to displease to enemy this time. While Fried is wondering what exactly this spell is supposed to accomplish, he hears Raz cry out and crumple to the floor, unconscious. “A delayed effect” Fried thinks to himself. “it only takes a few seconds, then it stops your heart.” He rushes to Raz’s side and begins to resuscitate him. Cackling, the necromancer casts another spell to extinguish the every light in the room, magically reinforcing the darkness so that even the non-humans can’t see a thing. Everyone in the party feels his presence as if it were everywhere at once, and all feel the blade of his saber lash out at them. With no senses or means of defense, everyone suffers a wound save Soviel, who uncannily dodged the surprise attack. The enemy reappears across the room, no longer surrounded. Having seen one of their companions fall, the rest of the party seeks a short end of the battle. The rush across the room, straight into an onslaught of acid breath attacks to finish the job. It is Issac who ultimately subjugates him, beating the last of the fight out of him with his oversized shield and pinning him to the wall. As the combat ends, Fried is able to successfully revive Raziel and bandage his wounds. Sensing that their foe is dying, Soh shouts to Fried to run and find Dechard. “He’ll have some questions for this one, I’m, sure.” As they wait for Fried to return with Dechard, the rest of the group attempts to interrogate their prey. Soh asks about what they wanted with the girl. The necromancer’s response is in an unintelligible language. When he sees they do not understand him, he laughs (chocking on blood as he does no) and deigns to address the in what he refers to as the “dirty tongue” (Common). He says that the girl was a means to an end, and the work that they were doing here was the will of the god. The party finds it peculiar that he refers to a singular god, as in their experience there are actually 9 (10, with the inclusion of Deadalus, whom Edriar serves). When pressed for a name, he answers in the first language “Glissah Labollus”. At this point Fried returns, and seeing the enemy on the verge of death, rushes to him to ask about the last necromancer they had met. “What was his name?” he shouts, but the cultist did not know. He never deigned to familiarize himself with the peons in his masters’ service. After all, at the start of this fight he’d killed two of them himself just to survive a little longer. Fried is dejected, fearing he will never know the answer about whether or not he had killed a man or a beast in their last encounter. Sensing that his time had run out, Edriar brushes past Issac and lifts the cultist high into the air by his skull, then bringing the body down with all the weight of his crushing force behind it. The body hit the floor , but Edriar’s hand continues on, driving into the floor and taking his head with it. When he rises, there is nothing but a deep red puddle at the end of the deceased’s neck. Dechard arrives just in time to see the grisly display, but knew that Edriar would only do this if there was no hope left of gleaning additional information. He nods, solemnly and recommends that the group leave the grisly chamber behind and return to the surface. Fried, Edriar, and Issac follow, hoping to glean what information they can from the girl they helped escape. Raziel and Soh remain, searching through the bodies for what useful items they could find. Among the dead they found 10 gold (which they split amongst themselves. Why share with those too dignified to do the dirty work?), the necromancer’s saber (with which Soh decided he’d supplement his arsenal), and a map of Mersscene which Raz found on the leader. A cursory glance from Soh indicated that they had marked a graveyard across town as a place of some particular interest. With their findings in hand (or back pocket), they ascended the steps to join the others. The girl they had rescued was hiding in the shadowsto the side of the bridge, just in case it was her captor who emerged victorious and not her saviors. Upon seeing Fried emerge, she comes of out hiding to greet him. As they draw nearer, they suddenly realize that they know one another, and rush to embrace one another with squeals of girlish delight (from each of them). Issac, irritated that his knight-in-shining-armor-esque rescue was now being interfered with, settled for kissing her hand with all the grace of his noble birth and accepting her undying gratitude for her rescue. Where Raz had grace, Raz had none. Upon exiting the tunnels, the first thing he saw has a buxom beauty. Without so much as acknowledging his companions, he marches right past all the others straight to the lass and shoves his tongue down her throat in a most passionate, albeit somewhat messy kiss. Issac has never seen such audacity, and stood incredulous. Fried is beside himself; furious enough to set his friend ablaze, but too shocked to move or speak. Having slated his thirst for her tonsils, Raziel moves on as if nothing unusual had transpired. When the woman recovers what can be salvaged of her composure, she introduces herself as Hellen, a priestess of Alnorum from the same order as Fried once was. The two of them were fast friends, having grown up together back at Cinderbrick, before the fire. She was in town on orders from the church when she was apprehended by the cult, but toe what end, she could not say. All that she had overheard was in that same strange language, and she knew nothing of their plans. Soh reminds Raz about the map, who produces it for Dechard’s inspection. Dechard confirms Soh’s suspicion that the area indicated is a local graveyard, and postulates that if the leader of the cult was carrying it, then it might be the location of the hidden underground temples that he has been searching for. He produces the key for a second time for the group to see and says that the evidence convinces him that whatever this key unlocks, they will find it there. He does, however, insist that the party adjourn to the Rat’s Nest again for the remainder of the evening. He is tired, and feels that some celebration is in order, but for the success of the evening and for the reuniting of old friends. The party agrees, and head’s back to the inn. Blake the Innkeeper welcomes the party with open arms. Brushing aside the fact that they vandalized his establishment, he admits that they probably saved his business from more damage than they caused. He is also pleased with the gold they left behind to partially cover the repair costs, and the free labor they got for him that morning. The girl thug they spared, named Allie, had cleaned herself up and was almost presentable, and was working at the inn for just her room and board. Dechard does his best to make everyone comfortable: a shower for Soh, a beer for Issac, peace and quiet for Edriar, women of questionable moral standards for Raziel, and a nice long chat for Fried and Hellen. When everyone reconvenes, questions abound. It is, after all, the first time they have sat down and made it a point to really acquaint themselves with one another. When asked, Edriar reveals that he is hunting more of his kind in the hopes of finding a group of his brothers whose actions have profaned the name of his god. Issac reveals that he is searching for a childhood friend, Caine, whom Hellen volunteers she has met some time ago. Fried shares that Hellen is, in fact, the reason he first came to Mersscene. He was looking for her to discover what he could about his brother Romin, another fire-wielding priest. Though supposed dead, Fried has (an very odd) reason to believe that his brother is not only alive, but also possibly responsible for some horrific, gruesome events. Sadly, Hellen is among those who believe Romin to be dead, and has no useful information on the subject, or on the location of Issac’s friend Caine. With that, and another round of gratitude, Hellen adjourns for the night. Though she is at no shortage of invitations, she elects to turn down joining Raziel’s orgy, as well as the chance to “properly” thank the young knight who saved her, and ultimately accepts Fried’s offer to take his room while he stays with Blake in the kitchen. The party then turns to Dechard to determine what his next move will be. As would be expected, he plans to adventure into the graveyard in search of the underground temple as soon as possible on the morrow. “I hope,” he said, looking at each of them in turn “that you will consider staying on with me. I know that you haven’t found much reward today, but I can promise that in the future, this quest will yield wealth (Fried) and challenges (Raziel) beyond your wildest dreams. I expect that our adventure together will take us to Yomraih, where there are rumored to be a group of Deadlin causing trouble (Edriar).” Issac volunteers his services to Dechard, hoping to make a name for himself the way Caine has done. Soh is left as the odd man out. Skeptical of the wealth he has to gain, and not interested in fame or glory, he has less incentive than most to press on with the group. Turning to Blake, Soh inquires after what his plans for the morrow were. At the first mention of cleaning and repairs to the Rat’s Nest, Soh turns back to Dechard and agrees to see his plans through, at least as long as they are in Mersscene. After that, the group goes their separate ways. Raziel converses with Dechard and Issac about the theoretical existence of dragons before retiring to his room with his questionable female company. The frenzied howls (both from Raz and his evening companions) that soon erupt from upstairs are enough the keep most of the party from so much as entering the second floor. Fried retires to the kitchen with Blake, Issac passes out drunk on the table (his first beer still unfinished), and Edriar and Soh sit back in silence, contentedly smoking their pipes as they await the dawn and the new adventures it brings…